Valve and AMD to Distribute Drivers via Steam

Sliver

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[br]In a new post at the official AMD site it was announced that Valve and AMD will be teaming up to to detect and install ATI Catalyst drivers with Steam.[br]
PC gamers can now detect and install the latest ATI Catalyst? driver for their ATI Radeon? graphics card directly from within Steam! Gamers using ATI graphics will not only be kept posted on the latest available drivers for their hardware, but with every update they?ll know that they?re getting the overall best possible gaming experience AMD and Valve can provide.[br]The first ATI Catalyst driver update that will be available via Steam will be ATI Catalyst 10.9.
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Pretty exciting to see Steam expanding into driver distribution. Hopefully this can lead to bigger things. You can read the entire news post here.
 
Good. I'm lazy when it comes to keeping my drivers up to date, and the use of Steam for this just makes sense.

Hope to see more along this vein soon.
 
Yes this is gonna be awesome! Forced drivers that are bugged to create crashes and incomplete driver uninstallations/installations! :bounce:
 
hool10 said:
Yes this is gonna be awesome! Forced drivers that are bugged to create crashes and incomplete driver uninstallations/installations! :bounce:
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Yeah, I'm not looking forward to this at all.
Hopefully it doesn't go any further than this since my nVidia gfx card is extremely picky when it comes to new drivers.
 
hool10 said:
Yes this is gonna be awesome! Forced drivers that are bugged to create crashes and incomplete driver uninstallations/installations! :bounce:
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That was my thought as well. However, the wording of the article makes me hopeful that automatic driver updates are optional, not mandatory. But I've been in the situation where a new driver made things worse. My stance on driver updates tends to be, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I say, "tends to be", because eventually, when I'm several revisions behind I'll update anyway with the irrational hope that I'll see some significant performance improvements on the same hardware.
 
hool10 said:
Yes this is gonna be awesome! Forced drivers that are bugged to create crashes and incomplete driver uninstallations/installations! :bounce:
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So like, where did you read "forced" in the article?

"PC gamers can now detect and install"

Notice it doesn't say "Steam will now detect and install"

If you think Valve, a company that has made games and went through great lengths to ensure compatibility on older systems, a company that is constantly pushing out updates and fixes, would force driver installs on Steam users, you must be stupid. Valve knows that people need to have different drivers sometimes. In fact, isn't a list of drivers people use part of the Steam Survey?
 
Yeah it doesnt mention it being obligatory anywhere. Just Hool being a paranoid reactionary as usual.
 
It'll probably flash at you like an engine warning light. Whether you actually do something about it is up to you.

Either way, nice idea. Shame it's only for ATI. What fool uses ATI these days over nVidia?
 
Dynasty said:
What fool uses ATI these days over nVidia?
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Intelligent ones, such as myself. ATI has ruled the scene for the last couple years since the release of their 58** series. And Nvidia's newest cards are barely better, at a significantly higher cost.
 
Vegeta897 said:
If you think Valve, a company that has made games and went through great lengths to ensure compatibility on older systems, a company that is constantly pushing out updates and fixes, would force driver installs on Steam users, you must be stupid. Valve knows that people need to have different drivers sometimes.
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Just like with patches!
 
Patches so are not in the same league as video card drivers when it comes to that. There's almost never a reason to not get a patch.

Besides Krynn, you stupid dog, you can turn off auto updating for any game in Steam. So there goes your argument.
 
The major CS: S update makes it unplayable on my old DX7 card. Kinda sucked since my brother was able to play a couple weeks before when I got it on sale for him. He's going to have to wait for me to make a new PC before he can have this one and be able to play again. Obviously such a multiplayer game is all "MUST UPDATE TO PLAY ONLINE."
 
Very convenient. Updating drivers is always a pain in the ass. Too bad I have an Nvidia card atm.
 
Dynasty said:
It'll probably flash at you like an engine warning light. Whether you actually do something about it is up to you.

Either way, nice idea. Shame it's only for ATI. What fool uses ATI these days over nVidia?
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You get the best bang for your buck with ATI. Nvidia cards might be better, but you pay a premium for miniscule performance gains..

Plus, I had two 8800 GTXs die on me in the last few years..
 
diluted said:
You get the best bang for your buck with ATI. Nvidia cards might be better, but you pay a premium for miniscule performance gains..

Plus, I had two 8800 GTXs die on me in the last few years..
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They both have their good and bads. I've had 2 ati and 2 nvidia cards die on me in the past few years. So it's about even for me. I just buy the best car I can get for my money at the time I'm buying, regardless of brand.

Nice feature for steam though, surprised it hasn't come sooner.
 
So you guys don't think that the game will not open unless you have X driver installed? The game developer will most likely want you to have a certain driver version installed most likely what they do with DX9 already. You must install DX9 or the game will not install. Also when have my knee jerk reactions been fake? It's called using common sense. I know that my PSP even requires a certain firmware version for certain games to play.
 
hool10 said:
Yes this is gonna be awesome! Forced drivers that are bugged to create crashes and incomplete driver uninstallations/installations! :bounce:
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This is the first thing I thought of too (new drivers getting applied to a PC that does not need fixed and bugs in new drivers causing a bad experience that did not happen on old drivers).

But it is good for AMD and ultimately good for the people who run the drivers since the install base of the new driver should be much larger if steam pushes it out to it's install base w/AMD cards. That just means bugs get fixed sooner.

It is a trade off switching from a longer time to figure out what went wrong but fewer customers with that issue to a shorter period of time with bug but more customers affected.
And on totally positive side going from less people with performance boost to more people with performance boost...

FYI future ATI cards will no longer be called ATI but just AMD. It will be AMD Radeon 6000.
 
I suppose if they actually utilise Steam to monitor any bugs that could be fixed with a quick update, it's a good thing.

But I agree that most of the time, my experience with new drivers causes more problems than it fixes, and I never seem to own the games they have specific fixes for.

My experience from ATI was the 9800pro, which I loved.

Ive been out of the PC parts game for a while now so I cant even imagine what leaps and bounds each company has made, all I know is that I got an BFG 8800GT O/Cd with 512mb and it was pretty damn good, and apparently much better than equivelant ATI version. Times may have changed.
 
As much as I'm happy with Nvidia, I'd be willing to try an ATI card if the reviews were plentiful and positive. Of course that's for a semi-distant future.
 
diluted said:
You get the best bang for your buck with ATI.
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:LOL:

:rolling:

edit: It does look like the 5850 has finally come down to retail price, surely because of the recent GTX 460 launch. We need both of them to remain competitive, or the prices get way out of hand.


Anyway, I agree with Asus, this is going to mean things get fixed faster.
 
Wow, its already in place. I just updated, and no, it wasn't forced Hool. All it did was pop up one of those update windows (the ones that announce sales and such), and then download the installer for me. Installation was still done by ATI's installer.
 
Krynn72 said:
Wow, its already in place. I just updated, and no, it wasn't forced Hool. All it did was pop up one of those update windows (the ones that announce sales and such), and then download the installer for me. Installation was still done by ATI's installer.
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But will it pop-up that window every time you start up Steam?
 
hool10 said:
Also when have my knee jerk reactions been fake? It's called using common sense. I know that my PSP even requires a certain firmware version for certain games to play.
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Oh, is that what you call it?
 
hool10 said:
But will it pop-up that window every time you start up Steam?
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It's completely voluntary. This ain't no doomsday, man.

it's a nice feature. i tried it out but it doesn't uninstall your previous drivers or anything so you have to do it manual or you end up with the steam version of the driver and the other version. NBD.
 
hool10 said:
But will it pop-up that window every time you start up Steam?
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Not sure. This time was only the announcement of it. It just said "AMD is now distributing drivers through steam, check now!" I didn't actually get a window saying my drivers were out of date.
 
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